Road Apples by Tim Sanders
May 30, 2011
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Things you may not have known about May 30 Over the years I’ve advised my readers to make sure the news stories they read are written by seasoned journalists. My readers, in turn, have often asked: How can I recognize a seasoned journalist? The answer, of course, is to look for the guy with salt, pepper and garlic powder on his shirt. But that answer is only a partial description of a seasoned journalist. A seasoned journalist should also know all about history. Not to toot my own horn or anything, but when it comes to hysterical journalism, I am completely seasoned. Make that “historical journalism.” Memorial Day is upon us, and this year the holiday falls on May 30. Here are some interesting historical May 30 facts about which you may not be aware ... of. • On May 30, 1431, Joan of Ark was fatally burned at the stake by the bloody British in the town of New Orleans. She was named Joan of Ark by her father, who was a French shipbuilder. The 19-year-old peasant girl is still considered France’s greatest general, and also the prettiest, unless you count General Charles DeGaulle. Joan told people that God talked to her. She could also hear high pitched noises normally only audible to dogs. Joan is now Saint Joan due to her untimely death. • And speaking of saints, I recently read (absolutely true) that the head of St. Vitalis of Assisi, who died on May 31, 1370, will be auctioned off this Memorial Day weekend in County Meath, Ireland. I don’t know how Vitalis lost his head, but I suspect it was somehow related to his death, and had a whole lot to do with his sainthood. There were several other saints named Vitalis, including St. Vitalis of Milan, St. Vitalis of Bologna, and St. Vitalis of Gaza. These were all reasonably good saints, but since his head has been in a wooden case for several hundred years, St. Vitalis of Assisi is the only Saint Vitalis traditionally revered as the patron saint of hair care products. • On May 30, 1539, Hernando de Soto (TRANS: “the Soto”) landed in Tampa Bay, Florida, looking for gold and the location of the mythical Typhoon Lagoon in the Magic Kingdom rumored to lie not far from the fabled city of Orlando. Unfortunately, all he had to go by were directions left over from Ponce de Leon’s Florida vacation in 1521, and they were written in Spanish. To his credit, de Soto did discover DeSoto Falls and DeSoto Caverns in northeastern Alabama. De Soto’s trip through the American Southeast took three years. I am not surprised. My wife and I are DeSoto experts. We once owned a 1960 DeSoto with a “Torqueflite” automatic pushbutton transmission. If we’d used that vehicle to propel us up through Florida into Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi at top speed, three years sounds about right. • Writer and actress Cornelia Otis Skinner was born on May 30, 1901. I’m almost certain that in high school I had to read something she’d written, but that was a long time ago and I don’t remember what it was. I do remember her name, though, because you hardly ever find a woman with a middle name like “Otis.” • Mel Blanc was born on May 30, 1908. Mel was known as “The Man of a Thousand Voices,” and created the voices for such animated characters as Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Wile E. Coyote, Speedy Gonzales, Woody Woodpecker, and Barney Rubble. In later years he also provided voices for cartoon favorites like the Bee Gees, Barbara Walters, H. Ross Perot and Congressman Barney Frank. • On May 30, 1911, Ray Harroun won the very first Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He drove his Marmon Wasp for almost seven hours at an average speed of just over 74 mph. A DeSoto Torqueflite could have easily stretched that 500-mile trip into fourteen hours, allowing for pit time spent beating those annoying little buttons on the dash with a ball peen hammer. • On May 30, 1926, George Jorgensen Jr. was born. George was his parents’ pride and joy until he was discharged from the Army in the early 1950s and decided to become Christine. Christine became famous after her surgery, and was the inspiration for calypso singer Louis Eugene Walcott’s “Is She Is or Is She Ain’t.” Calypso Louie Walcott later changed his name to Minister Calypso Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, Inc., Ltd. Christine was also the inspiration for the Ed Wood film “Glen or Glenda?” George had not been a particularly handsome man, but as a woman Christine was ... well ... still not a particularly handsome man. • On May 30, 1957, America was electric with excitement. United Artists Studios were just two weeks away from their June 14 release of “The Monster that Challenged the World.” This was the realistic depiction of what could very easily occur if an earthquake under California’s Salton Sea were to cause prehistoric mollusk eggs to hatch into enormous mollusks capable of traveling through underground aquifers and sucking the insides out of divers, surfers and fishermen in the Pacific and unsuspecting Kansas farmers drawing water from their wells. The movie was based on a very real scientific experiment in which prehistoric brine shrimp eggs millions of years old were reconstituted and hatched. I’m not sure, but my guess would be that “Attack of the Giant Sea Monkeys” was never seriously considered as a title. • And finally, on May 30, 1962, Kevin Eastman was born. Eastman was the co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but since he had no other felonies on his rap sheet, he was never indicted or prosecuted for the crime. I hope this little lesson on the historical significance of May 30 has been instructional. As a very famous man (I forget his name) once said, “Those who do not learn from History are destined to repeat the course the following semester.” I did |